Portland General Electric to Buy Washington Wind Energy Project

Portland General Electric Co. (POR), a
utility that serves about 800,000 customers in northwest Oregon,
agreed to buy a wind farm under development in Washington State
that’s expected to cost as much as $535 million.

The utility will buy the second phase of Puget Sound Energy
Inc.’s Lower Snake River wind farm near Dayton, Washington, and
expects to complete the deal in August, PGE said today in a
statement.

The wind farm’s electricity will help PGE comply with a
state law that requires utilities to provide 15 percent of their
energy from renewable resources beginning in 2015, according to
the statement.

The project will be built by a unit of the U.K.’s Renewable
Energy Systems Ltd. and consist of 116 Siemens AG (SIE) wind turbines
that each have 2.3 megawatts of generating capacity. PGE, based
in Portland, Oregon, will operate the facility after
construction is completed, expected in 2015, it said.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Andrew Herndon in San Francisco at
aherndon2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net